


you want a revelation

by le2biian (ClockworkDinosaur)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Crimes & Criminals, Fantrolls, Gen, God Tier (Homestuck), Loss of Limbs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23720767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkDinosaur/pseuds/le2biian
Summary: Jaynne Deaoux plays a game with some acquaintances. Things don't always go well.
Relationships: Original Troll Character(s)/Original Troll Character(s) (Homestuck)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> im playing homestuckDnD (or, sweet dungeons and hella dragons as we called it dhjxhd) and i rolled a nat 20 and then a nat 1 immediately after
> 
> the title is from No Light No Light by Florence + The Machine, fitting for a Light player hfkzhd

The Land of Shelves and Towers is beautiful and glimmering. Blindingly so, Jaynne thinks dryly, squinting as she surveys her surroundings. Each glass spire reaches toward the white sky and refracts its glow, passing it around like a secret.

It's the first time she's been alone in a while, she realizes. Solitude was once a comfort born from anonymity, but now she just felt vulnerable. She loathed the feeling and straightened her back. If her suspicions were correct, she could be off her planet in less than an hour.

Each stiletto-thin tower holds innumerable books, filled with knowledge she could spend sweeps absorbing. She could lose herself in just one library, game be damned. 

But, she reminds herself, she has a mission. Her footsteps, no matter how light, thud and reverberate through the stained-glass ground beneath her feet. Picking a tower at random, she strides through the transparent doors. The light is slightly less blinding inside and she allows herself a moment for her eyes to adjust. The sheer number of books, thick tomes made of oddly thin engraved glass, dims and filters the light.

For just a minute, she allows herself to wander. Her fingers trace the cool spines of the books and her eyes take in their titles.  _ 50 Fantastic Grubloaf Recipes, The Troll Iron Chef Companion Guide, Old Alternian Cook.  _ The entire tower is filled with cookbooks. There were certainly worse towers to test her theories on.

She picks a shelf at random and deposits its contents in a neat stack on a nearby glass table. An inspection of the shelf itself provides no insight and she sighs. Nothing is ever so simple.

At random she picks a book.  _ 101 Uses For Mind Honey Outside Of Lusus Training. _ Her mind flashes to Zierre and for a moment she considers tucking this specific book away. Surely a goldblood could have use for it, certainly more than Jaynne herself. 

Instead, she diligently flips through as she ascends the translucent spiral staircase to the top of the tower.

On top, the whole of her planet stretches out in front of her. Stained glass dapples the ground in dazzling barely-there shadows. She can see the thousands of books in the tower beside her, and thousands more in the tower beyond that, off into the curving horizon.

There are millions upon millions of books, she thinks. Losing one for the sake of learning more than its pages could ever dream to contain is a small sacrifice. 

She holds the glass book out and lets it slip from her fingers to shatter to the floor stories before. The shattering makes her flinch, but she waits a moment, listening carefully. She waits to feel something, an idea bestowed as a reward for solving the puzzle.

She waits, and nothing happens. 

Descending the stairs, she eyes the books she passes as if committing their titles to memory. Glass crunches under her feet as she steps back outside.

She is blinded again as the sky turns its full force on her again. She allows herself a moment to adjust to the light and coolness as she positions herself in the middle of the glass walkway. 

Looking up at the glass spire full of recipes makes her feel small.

The reassuring weight and coolness of the pistol in her hand, deftly removed from her strife specibus, builds her back up again. For a sober moment she rudiments on how easily violence can tear knowledge to its knees. How one bullet can reduce a library to dust. 

In the next moment, she is taking aim at the center of the spire, its weakest point in her sights. She fires, and hits her mark with a  _ clink _ .

Spiderwebs of cracks branch out from the tiny hole in its outer wall. There is a sharp groan, and a symphony of small crystalline shatters as books within fall from the quaking walls.

And then, all at once, it collapses.

Its suddenness takes Jaynne off guard. The tower seems to explode outward, expelling shards of glass the size of her that pierced the ground and cracked the green pathway she stood on.

Jaynne, not for the first time, wondered if she was going to die. Dying alone had seemed like an inevitability once, but faces flashed through her mind that she was afraid to leave behind.

She caught her own expression in a falling shard, met her own terrified eyes, just before an impossible pain sent her crashing to the ground atop the shards.

She laid there still until the all-encompassing crashing silenced around her. Her own ragged breath was the last sound until she realized, belatedly, that she was surrounded by blood. It gleamed on the glass like precious gems until its color registered and she bolted upwards with a strangled cry. 

She studied her scraped hands, her bloodied arms and her shirt drenched with blood.

There was a part of her, as she took inventory of herself, that already knew what she would find once she looked lower.

There was so much blood, that color that filled her veins and was kept well hidden now spreading across the ground like spilled ink.

And, like an odd funhouse mirror that distorted her body and distributed it across warped mirrors, she saw her own leg behind a towering chunk of glass.

She screamed once, a harsh and pained animalistic sound that bounced back around her and filled her ears with her own sickening distress. It cleared her mind just enough for instinct to take over and she pulled out her palmhusk, slippery with blood.

Her shaking fingers hesitated. Zierre was a healer, and had handled Clairre's own impromptu amputation well. Last she saw of her, however, was her deeply sleeping body.

Clairre was certainly strong enough to help her, and was no stranger to sudden limb loss. She feared that they would freeze, and that would still leave her dead and Clairre undoubtedly upset.

For her resilience, Jaynne did not have all the time in the world, and yet she still spent precious few seconds yearning for her… whatever they all were to each other now.

The logical answer popped online not a moment too soon.

"Aerith," Jaynne said shakily. "I may have made a mistake."

"Hang on, I'll be right there," Aerith sighed, but worry tinged her flat tone. "What happened?"

"I-I, well. It's a long story."


	2. sweeps in the past....

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a look at jaynne's fun and profitable criminal exploits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired by a fellow player [ posting their hsd&d exploits in one convenient place,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24087106/chapters/57974941) here's another jaynne fic!

"I'm here to help," you say with a smile, and even the most cunning of ceruleans wouldn't detect a lie. You  _ aren't _ lying, not exactly; you do intend to help to the best of your abilities. So your abilities include blending in and finding ways into places full of information that you shouldn't have, or making acquaintances who have close friends who just so happen to be rich, powerful, and stupid. You've used these abilities in many situations and they've so rarely failed you. 

The kid with clown makeup applied days ago and a dead lusus outside their hive doesn't need to know all of that. They'll never know anything about you. It's so easy to pick up a new name if necessary, to pack up your books and belongings and simply move into a hive that has been left empty for sweeps. The drones scan you and know you belong anywhere you decide to go so long as you aren't too close to the shore. Neighbors don't question you, you simply slide into their lives and begin watching. You always learn a lot by the time you move again.

The purpleblood looks at you with big sad eyes and you wear your best sympathy mask. It's an uncommon enough expression on Alternia that its emptiness doesn't seem to register.

"I can help you find who did this," you say. You're no teal investerrogator but they don't need to know that. Based on their bereft and dazed expression they don't seem to notice your lack of sign or literally any identifying features at all. They just see a normal face and a willingness to set aside customary Alternian violence to lend a hand during what is certainly a difficult time.

You helped the teal on the run from the vengeful defendant found guilty. You helped the violet pull the right strings to get their kismesis' moirail killed. You helped the rust get into the indigo's hive and helped the indigo track down the thief who stole her incriminating documents. You help. 

When you go to the weekly ball thrown by the local seadwellers with the reassuring weight of your pistol at your side, you listen. Nobody talks more than a seadweller with a secret and a need to impress the right trolls. Gold gleams and clatters on wrists and necks, shines as it cascades from horns and fins. Wealth is flaunted to those who are too blinded to see beyond their own refracted light.

You listen to the highblood chatter and note with a hollow sort of satisfaction that none of them notice you in your gray and silver suit. None of them question your caste to be sure they rub elbows with the powerful, none of them assume you are simply the help and sneer down at you. Passing through the crowd like a shadow in full moonlight and collecting information on all those you pass is as easy as breathing. 

The information you glean is invaluable, but there is always a market. The purpleblood pays handsomely to know that their lusus was murdered by a violet with a mouth to feed. There's vengeance in their expression, a childlike drive to hurt someone who hurt them first, and you don't tell them to be careful. You don't tell them that vengeance will be their downfall. You smile a flat smile and you fade into the night.

In the coming perigrees, the violetblood who heard your name from an acquaintance will come to you for revenge against a murdering purpleblood. You will investigate the local sect of the clown church for its heresy and pass that information along to interested parties. The purplebloods will pay to have the spy killed, but by then you will be long gone. Your new neighbors will not question your sudden appearance and the name you will give will not be the name you were hatched with.

"I'm here to help," you say with a smile. The cerulean in front of his burning hive looks at you with hollow eyes and you offer your most convincing mask of sympathy. He does not see you. He takes your helping hand.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaynne is bad at emotions and then dies asmr

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for blood and dying in this chapter! this whole session was like. our Game Over hfjdhdb
> 
> this is actually a few weeks old now, if you want some Recent Shenanigans [ check out Clairre's player's fics too owo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24087106/chapters/57974941)

The Battlefield around you is awash in bright red blood. You stand close, perhaps too close to Clairre but right now they are the only thing grounding you.

You care. It's scary to admit but you care so much about Clairre and cling to them as if they are at risk of being blown away in the breeze that just kicked up. 

You care so much about Zierre and her body on that tiny screen is all you can see. You care, and you refuse to think about that in the past tense. Her gold blood dripped down the wicked spike through her chest and you can't even do anything about it.

Not knowing what to do is becoming frighteningly common. On Alternia you knew the rules well enough to expertly break and bend them to your advantage, but nothing in Sgrub has been understandable and you're sick of it. You're sick of having your hands tied, sick of worrying whether or not you're about to become tool used to hurt your friends, and sick of being on this fucking battlefield where the chess people are now shooting at you and Clairre.

Clairre picks you up without a word and without resistance, and lands in a hollow, crumbling building that hardly feels safer than being out in the open. You feel heavy when you land and sink to your knees beside Clairre, whose face is covered in orange tears. You hold their hand and refuse to let go. There was no choice in leaving Zeirre alone, but you feel the deep gut feeling that you should have done something. 

For a too-long moment you are both silent. You want to do something beyond hold Clairre but your mind is in a blank state of shock and pain and ideas refuse to form. You think you're crying and that's strange, you didn't cry when you lost your leg or when Ritzie manipulated time around you to make you feel sweeps of pain in a second. You're leaning against Clairre now and they're running their hands through your hair and that almost makes you cry harder.

"I don't know what to do," you admit. 

"And you think I do?" Clairre says with a grimace. 

"No," you admit as tactfully as you can, "but we can't stay here. We have to get off the battlefield."

They play with your hair, which feels so nice in a way you feel guilty for enjoying while everything sucks so much, and you can nearly hear the gears turning in their mind.

"The… shuttles," they say eventually. "The ones that go to and from Prospit. Maybe we could get one of those."

"Something tells me the transit schedule may be affected by the battle," you point out. Clairre blinks at you.

"We could just. Steal it."

It's refreshing to be around people who are equally flippant about ownership laws.

Hand in hand you race from the meager shelter.

Being on the move feels good. Like you're choosing to no longer wallow in terror.

"We need to get to Zierre's planet," you say. "Perhaps there's something we can do, we can get her to go God Tier. Do you remember the process well enough?"

Clairre looks panicked for a moment. "I, uh. Ritzie took me to the bed inside the moon."

"Yes," you say. Your stomach burns at the mention of Ritzie but you keep your lips pressed firmly together.

"I- I." 

You feel you aren't going to get anything else from them right now, and that's okay. Clairre deals with things far differently than you, and you don't mind taking the proverbial wheel in this situation. 

And, you note with relief, the literal wheel too. The bright yellow scuttlebuggy waits in a field, ripe for the hot wiring. Clairre throws you a relieved half-smile as you both race towards the shuttle.

And then it explodes.

With ringing ears and the breath knocked out of you, you stare at the sky until the world refocuses. A hand finds yours, frantic, and you squeeze. You take stock of your limbs- all that still exist are accounted for. Clairre is already up on their feet and helping you. 

You aren't alone. She floats on massive white wings and grins down at the two of you. The cherub says something but you don't hear it over the crack of your pistol. You fire and fire and fire, your alchemized gun not needing to be reloaded.

Bullets float in front of Ritzie, and fall to the ground by her feet unspent.

Clairre is growling. You can hear them over the ringing in your ears and the incessant gunfire.

"Do you remember how I said I didn't want to go God Tier?" you ask Clairre through gritted teeth. They grunt an affirmative. 

"She's the reason. She had my dreamself the whole time-"

"And it was so easy too!" Ritzie interrupts gleefully. "Having you do the dirty work against your friends with that whole  _ Princess _ gambit."

"Fuck you," you spit.

She giggles. "Almost as easy as killing that goldblood bitch on her planet!"

"Fuck you!" you and Clairre say at the exact same moment. Your hands find each other on instinct. There's a power that flows freely through you both and from your gun erupts a tornado of fire. It surrounds and consumes Ritzie in flames until she is entirely obscured.

Another giggle, now behind you. "Now that was cool!"

For a highblood, you were never particularly strong. But as you turn on your heel you use your momentum to swing your fist and connect with her grinning green face, you channel everything you feel into that punch. For Zierre, for Aerith, for all of your friends, for yourself. She flies backwards and a trail of cyan blood drips from her nostril. 

She looks up and grins, cutting your satisfaction short. Ritzie snaps and is changed into a bright red outfit, regal and dangerous. A fully fledged Prince of Time. You do not bother to shoot at her.

"Why don't you go ahead and check your little creeping watch?" she says loudly, and the giddiness of her tone turns your blood cold.

Your bloodpusher drops and you tune your miniature "fourth wall" to Aerith.

Aerith, Persephone, and Ritzie.

It is a live feed, and you can still feel Ritzie's manic stare as you and Clairre huddle around your watch.

You see Aerith, undisguised, turn to face Persephone. Persephone looks surprised for just a moment, but shoots Aerith a thumbs-up and a reassuring grin.

You usually hate her, but right now you could give her a hug.

Then, in a blink, Aerith is by Ritzie's side. Ritzie doesn't need to move it seems, in an instant she is holding two halves, one pink and one blue, of a pair of scissors and your hand instinctively covers your mouth. You know how powerful each individual half of the cherubs' juju is, and together it is nigh undefeatable. With a snip they are rejoined, purple and wickedly sharp.

You can't hear what Ritzie says, but you don't need to. You watch her effortlessly cut through the strong muscles that connect Aerith's wing to her back. Aerith, blank faced, appears at the edge of the cliff.

Persephone watches, frozen, and you want to shake her, begging for her to do something as Ritzie knocks an arrow takes aim at Aerith.

Persephone watches, and so do you, as Ritzie fires. Her aim is true and the arrow finds its mark in Aerith's neck. Clairre is sobbing and you feel sick as you watch Aerith's body plummet.

The screen goes dark.

Faster than you can react, Clairre lunges and swings their axe, but Ritzie is floating above you both with a triumphant smile. You cannot hear her over the growl building up in your throat, but you don't need to.

The look in her cyan eye tells you that you've served her purpose. 

You don't see her unleash her arrows, but you feel each and every single one as it pierces your stomach.

"Oh," you find yourself saying as you look down at the bouquet of blue-feathered arrows embedded in your body. 

Of course that bitch is killing you. After everything she did to you, the pain and manipulation and the secrets you unwittingly kept, this feels the most unfair. She kills you and doesn't even bother to watch the job get done, taking off into the sky.

You fall back but are stopped by a warm pair of arms. For once in your lonely life, you aren't worried about yourself at all. Clairre is openly sobbing, and while that's not entirely unusual as of late, you know it's because of you. You smile as reassuringly as you can with blood filling your throat, which doesn't seem to help.

"This, whatever happens, it isn't your fault," you say haltingly. You put a hand to their face, blue and orange mixing, and feel warmth that isn't entirely from them under your palm. Their eyes seem to light up, and they pick you up so gently and hold you to their chest. Every movement is agony and you know they're going to be absolutely drenched in indigo, but you rest your head against their chest and listen to the steady, frantic beating of their pusher. 

If that's the last thing you ever hear, you wouldn't mind it.

You fade in and out of consciousness. You are a highblood, yes, but there are a dozen or so arrows in your stomach, tearing through your organs. You are dying, slowly, and you fear that every time the darkness clouds your vision it will be too late.

You don't want to leave Clairre alone.

They take you to your planet, darting between stained glass buildings until they find an island surrounded by a lake of glass shards. You wonder, foggily, if the shards of the building you collapsed are in there. Every thought you have is foggy actually, and you feel dread settle in what remains of your stomach. You don't want to die.

The sun symbol on the slab is recognizable and moderately reassuring. With so much gentleness they lay you down in the middle of all that gold, but they do not let you go. 

Your pusher is laboring now, you can feel it falter slightly. Clairre kneels beside you and grips your hand with a terrified expression.

You hate this, you hate dying; even more, you hate making one of the people you love watch you die slowly. 

With your free hand, you yank an arrow from your body. Fresh blood stains the stone and you bite back a gasp. They watch you with confused distress as you pull out another arrow.

"If this doesn't work," you say with a voice that holds far more strength than you feel, "help Zierre, okay? There has to be, to be something to save them."

Another arrow. You don't actually feel your body much anymore, which is terrifying and reassuring. 

"It'll work," they say with conviction. 

"Just in case." Another arrow. It's so hard to control your movements. 

There are so many things you want to say.

_ I'm afraid. _

_ Don't leave me, please.  _

_ I love you.  _

_ Please be careful. Stay safe. Stay alive. _

"Thank you. For this, f-for everything," you say, and they hug you. They're going to get hurt, and the thought fills you with terror and your stuttering pusher seems to clench.

You laugh weakly. "I am full of arrows, please be careful."

"I don't care."

"Thank you," you say again, and try and put everything you feel behind your words. It's not enough. It'll never be enough.


End file.
